


Show Me A Garden That's Bursting Into Life

by merrin



Series: Scenes From the Apocalypse [1]
Category: Hockey RPF, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Feelings, Gen, Permanent Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-13 20:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10520889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merrin/pseuds/merrin
Summary: Two years after injury forced Jordie to leave the jaeger program, Jamie visits him on the farm.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU of the AU. I cannibalized the best bits of Pacific Rim (and all of its terminology) and made whatever this is. Don't look for canon accuracy, but the spirit remains. Thanks to C for reading through it and to, like, everyone on twitter for their encouragement.

Jamie has to get special permission to leave the coast, which isn’t hard to get when he tells them what he wants it for. Leave is hard to come by when kaiju are crawling out of the rift with this frequency, but Jamie doesn’t need much time, and there isn’t a person on that base that doesn’t owe him and Jordie their lives at least ten times over. 

The Marshall sends him in a chopper, which Jamie would be embarrassed by if he weren’t grateful for the expediency. Still, Jamie has the pilot set down about a mile from Jordie’s place. Jamie doesn’t want to scare the goats. 

“Just give me a few hours,” he tells the pilot after the chopper’s powered down. A few hours after two years away seems like too much and not enough. 

She jumps down from the pilot’s seat and pulls a book out from her bag stowed underneath. “I was told you could take most of the day,” she says. “Just be back before the sun goes down.” She settles under a tree as Jamie makes his way out to the road. 

Tyler had offered to go with him but it’s still too new. He knows Tyler saw it in the drift, felt the sharp, cutting pain in Jordie’s leg just like Jamie did. Felt the white hot pain of it as Jamie pulled them back to shore almost entirely on his own strength and will, Jordie hanging in shock or pain in the harness next to him, legs moving because Jamie’s were. He wonders (because he hasn’t asked) if Tyler feels it outside the drift sometimes, like an echo. Like Jamie does. 

The code on the gate is still the same. Jamie had set it up for him, back when Jordie couldn’t even make it from his bed to the front door, let alone the gate. Jamie hadn’t even thought to check so he’s glad he doesn’t have to climb anything. He’s pretty sure the fences are electrified. 

Jordie’s house is large, pre-kaiju construction with tons of rooms and windows that Jordie has no use for. After a search, it’s clear he’s not inside, so Jamie sits on a hay bale outside the barn. 

The Pacific coastlines had all been abandoned after that second kaiju came out of the Breach. Only people left are those too stubborn or too poor to leave. The Marshall asked where Jordie wanted to go when he had to quit, kind of a reward for his service and almost losing his leg. Jamie argued for further inland, one of the safe zones in, like, Nebraska, but he’d never been good at directing Jordie’s course of action. 

One time, Jordie had followed Jamie’s lead, and this is where it got him: washed out of the jaeger program on a debilitating injury he’d have for the rest of his life. 

So Jamie didn’t argue much when Jordie picked a plot of land up in the mountains behind what’s left of San Francisco, a decision he based on the fact that if a kaiju ever got that far again, they were already fucked. 

Jordie keeps goats and a couple of horses, trades milk for the crops that his neighbor Jason grows a couple miles down. It’s subsistence living and he could probably do better for himself, could probably have stayed on the program as a tech specialist, but Jordie never liked being cooped up on the base in the first place. Jamie loves it, but he also doesn’t have as many memories of Victoria before the kaiju destroyed the island. Four walls and a steel reinforced door have always meant safety to him.

He’s just about to let himself take a quick nap when he hears hoofbeats, two horses coming slowly back to the barn. Jamie doesn’t recognize the kid on the back of the first one, but it doesn’t matter, his eyes slide right past the puzzled look on the kid’s face when Jordie comes into view. Jordie’s smile is quick and bright, buried under a beard he would have never been able to fit under a helmet two years ago. 

“I thought I heard a chopper,” Jordie says, sliding slowly and somewhat awkwardly off his horse. “Radek, will you-” he tosses his reins towards the kid and then he limps closer to Jamie and hugs him. 

It’s good to hug him. So often when they were drifting, they’d forget to talk out loud, let alone get close enough to touch each other on the shoulder or the arm. Everything felt either too close or not close enough back then. Jamie can feel the whipcord strength in his arms and shoulders, so much broader than they’d been when they were regularly being harnessed into armored plating. Jamie’s had an inch or so on him since that last growth spurt but Jordie’s bigger, thicker where Jamie is lean. 

“Fuck,” Jordie says in his ear. “I know it’s hard to get away, but you should try more often.” He pulls back, claps his hands on Jamie’s shoulders just to get a look at him. 

Jamie’s awkward under scrutiny, but this is Jordie. He isn’t sure what Jordie’s cataloguing about his appearance: the ill-advised mohawk he’d cut into his hair, the burst blood vessel in his eye from his first drift with Tyler, the way even he can see how pale he’s gotten in the shitty fluorescents of his bathroom. Jordie, however, looks great. His hair is longer, he’s got a scattering of freckles across his cheeks and nose that Jamie’s pretty sure hadn’t been there when they were squirreled away in the depths of the Shatterdome. Everything about him looks tan and healthy, except for that limp.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” Jordie says, ruffling what’s left of Jamie’s hair. He follows Radek into the barn and Jamie follows, just like he always does. 

Radek has the horses hitched to a line in the middle of the barn, saddles already off. 

Jordie limps over to the wall where an assortment of brushes and tack hang. He tosses a thick circular brush to Jamie before moving back to where Radek is brushing his horse. “Hey Faks,” he says, taking the brush that Radek has been using, “go move the goats to the west field. Grass is looking thin in the north field.” 

Jamie steps up to the other horse slowly and carefully, brush hovering a few inches off his? her? side. “What’s this one’s name?” he asks. Jordie hadn’t had the horses when he came last. Of course, he hadn’t had the goats either. Or, like, the ability to walk to the bathroom on his own.

Jordie’s already started briskly brushing his horse. “I let Radek name her,” he says, “so he called her Milacek.” 

“What does it mean?”

“Sweetheart.” 

Jamie starts brushing Milacek’s side in broad circles like Jordie is doing. “Just don’t bite me,” he says quietly. “And what about that one?” 

“Um.” Jordie doesn’t answer for a minute. “I named him Raiju.” 

Jamie fumbles with the brush, pushes a little too hard. Milacek steps sideways and snorts at him and Jamie drops the brush jumping back. Jordie laughs at him. “That horse is way too lazy to bite you, bro.” 

Jamie picks up the brush again. “I’ll be nice if you are,” he says to the horse. She flicks her tail and Jamie takes it as agreement. 

He wants to ask about the horse’s name, but he also doesn’t. If Jordie wants to name a horse after the kaiju that ruined his leg, that’s his business. He brushes Milacek quietly, watching as the dust billows off her sides in the slanting sunlight. 

Jordie starts telling a story about the goats, something about Demers down the road and a crop of broccoli over the winter. Jamie listens but he’s mostly letting the words roll over him, thinking how much easier this would be if they could just drift. 

Jordie cuts the rhythm of his story short. “You didn’t come here for this,” he says. Maybe they don’t need the drift anymore after all, Jamie thinks. 

“I did.” 

“But not really.” 

“I want to know how you are.” 

“I’m fine. I get around fine. Radek’s here to help with the heavy stuff, Demers comes down if I need another set of hands. We get along. But what about you?” 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean they keep coming, don’t they? I keep wondering if I would ever find out if something happened. If they’d remember to tell me. It’s not like I can turn on a TV out here.” 

Which is true. News stations still exist, but with so little infrastructure on the coast to keep lines maintained they’re a luxury of the military and the very rich. Jamie doesn’t remember having a tv in their living room in Victoria, access to endless channels of things other than news blurbs about the latest shortages and critical failures, but Jordie does. “Marshall would tell you. He wouldn’t forget.” 

“You’re getting a new partner, huh?” 

Jamie stops mid swipe with the brush. He’s moved up towards Milacek’s neck and she swings around to nibble at his jacket. He starts brushing again in long strokes down her neck. He doesn’t know if Jordie’s looking at him. He doesn’t want to look up to find out. “They repaired her, you know. Nova.” 

“I didn’t know.” 

Jamie nods. “They’re scaling back on building new jaegers, you know? Because they cost so much and the kaiju just keep coming.”

“And the wall.” 

Jamie rolled his eyes at that. That ill-advised wall that everyone in the jaeger program knew would be useless. “Yeah. So they have to keep the old ones running as much as they can. And well. People who can drift are-” 

Jordie’s at his side suddenly. Jamie doesn’t know when he got there. “They already found you one.” 

Jamie stops the pretense of brushing and just rests his forehead against Milacek’s flank. “His name is Tyler.” He wants to vomit, and it’s a magnitude of thousands worse than just thinking that he might never pilot again. 

“Jamie,” Jordie says, loud and almost right in his ear, like he’s been saying it for a while. “It’s okay.” 

“What?” 

“It’s fine. It’s okay.” 

Jamie lifts his head up again, but he can’t look at Jordie’s face. Can’t meet his eyes. Can’t be forgiven. He turns away. “But you . . . I just.” 

“It was your dream,” Jordie says. “I just helped. But this?” He slaps his hand on Milacek’s side, urging her into her stable. “This is mine. It’s fine.” 

Jamie doesn’t know what to do with his hands now. He’s still holding the brush, tapping the bumpy side against his thigh. “I just. I don’t want you to think that I’m like. I don’t want you to feel like I’m replacing-” 

Jordie doesn’t let him finish, just uses his (now) superior arm strength to lock Jamie in a headlock. “I’m still your brother, asshole, of course you aren’t replacing me.” 

Jamie twists and pulls and eventually breaks free (either because Jordie lets him or because of Jordie’s leg, Jamie can’t tell). 

“C’mon,” Jordie says once Jamie is done adjusting his jacket and his dignity. “I’ll make some lunch.” 

Lunch is a spread of vegetables from Demers’ garden, smoked goat, and a warm loaf of brown bread. “Wheat’s hard to come by,” Jordie says. “Supply lines go straight to the coast, and we’re not directly in the way. But Demers heads in every so often for stuff we can’t make or grow.”

They take a tour of the farm after. Jordie offers to saddle up Milacek for Jamie, but the only thing he trusts himself to pilot is a jaeger and he declines. Jordie saddles up a smaller black horse to help him get around. Jordie shows him the goat fields, the rabbit hutches (“you would not believe the fertilizer benefits of rabbit shit”), the raised garden beds where he grows beans and eggplants in the summer and broccoli and lettuce in the winter. 

Jordie’s showing him the backup generators he uses on nights the grid goes down when Jamie notices the sun dipping toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the barnyard. 

“You staying tonight?” Jordie asks. 

“Gotta get back,” Jamie says. Jordie nods. 

Jordie has Radek pack him up a bag of fresh cucumbers they’d just picked that morning and rides next to him to the gate, hopping down off the little black horse (Krása, which apparently means “beauty” in Czech) to give Jamie a bone crushing hug. 

“Don’t do this again,” he mutters in Jamie’s ear. “Two years is too long.” 

“I won’t.” 

“I’ll come down there next time and I will embarrass you in front of everyone.” 

“I know.” 

The pilot’s waiting for Jamie, right where he left her. “Ready?” she asks, and he nods. Their ascent takes them over Jordie’s spread and Jamie leans over in his seat, watching Jordie shrink in the distance. He waits until he can’t even make the fences out in the swallowing shadows before he turns back toward the setting sun, toward the Shatterdome, toward Tyler.


End file.
